A current NASCAR star is quickly gaining on them, however. The list spanning NASCAR's best road course drivers is led by four-time champion Jeff Gordon and three-time champion Tony Stewart. The two have a combined 17 wins between them at this type of circuit, with Gordon's nine wins holding a slight advantage over Stewart's eight.
Cup Series champion Chase Elliott has quickly become one of NASCAR's best road course drivers. He has five road course wins in just five full seasons and is well on his way to tracking down Gordon and Stewart.
There are plenty of good ones left, now that drivers in the Sprint Cup Series have taken learning the craft of road racing more seriously than many of them used to in the old days. Jeff Gordon has won nine times combined at Sonoma Raceway and Watkins Glen International, the two road courses currently on the Cup circuit.
A road course ringer, also known as road course specialist, road course expert, or a road runner, is a non-NASCAR driver who is hired by a NASCAR Cup Series or NASCAR Xfinity Series team to race, specifically on road courses .
Jeff Gordon Those numbers speak for themselves, and that's why Gordon remains No. 1 among NASCAR's road-course racers. Gordon's average finish of 8.24 in his career at Sonoma is the best of all active Sprint Cup drivers, as is his total of five victories.
Chase Elliott, 7 wins. Watkins Glen: 2 wins. Chris Trotman | Getty Images for NASCAR.Tony Stewart, 8 wins. Watkins Glen: 5 wins. Jon Ferrey | Allsport.Jeff Gordon, 9 wins. Watkins Glen: 4 wins.
In addition, he is one of three drivers to finish in the top 10 in all three road course races so far this season - with a best finish of second at Road America. Larson has also fared well on road courses with three victories coming on this track type - fourth-most among active drivers.
Blaney also has a win at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval on his resume and has the fourth-best average finish on the three road courses the Cup Series has visited thus far in 2022 (7.6). Meanwhile, Truex qualified back in the 25th position as the Toyota camp has struggled on road courses this season.
Average Driver RatingChase Elliott. 99.7.Ross Chastain. 92.9.Ryan Blaney. 92.2.Christopher Bell. 90.7.Kyle Busch. 90.3.
Richard Petty is the best NASCAR driver of all time. Although his record of seven championships is tied with Dale Earnhardt and Jimmie Johnson, Petty holds the records for most wins, poles, career starts, wins in a season (27), consecutive wins (10), and Daytona 500 wins (7), among other distinctions.
Circuit of the Americas (or COTA) has 20 turns — some sharp, some sweeping and others like an "S" — all with varying degrees of elevation....NASCAR Fantasy Picks: Best Circuit of the Americas Drivers for DraftKings.SalaryDriverDraftKings Score$11,900.00Martin Truex Jr.13.6$11,100.00Denny Hamlin37$8,700.00Kurt Busch49.95$6,800.00Ryan Newman9.453 more rows•May 22, 2021
Average Finishes for Ryan Blaney at NASCAR TracksTrackBest Finish1Gateway (WWT)42Martinsville23Sonoma34Bristol Dirt523 more rows
Average Finishes for Kyle Larson at NASCAR TracksTrackAvg Rating1Nashville124.02Dover123.43Watkins Glen115.84Michigan105.223 more rows
As of 2022, current NASCAR national-level road courses include Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Circuit of the Americas, Sonoma, Watkins Glen, the Charlotte Roval, Road America, Mid-Ohio and Mosport.
Average Finishes for Joey Logano at NASCAR TracksTrackAvg Rating1Gateway (WWT)118.12Bristol Dirt122.43Phoenix112.34Charlotte Roval101.623 more rows
Chase Elliott2022 road-course raceFinishRoad America, Elkhart Lake, Wis., July 32Sonoma, Calif., June 128COTA, Austin, Texas, March 274Jul 26, 2022
sevenIn 2020, he won the Cup Series championship in Phoenix Arizona, the first for Hendrick Motorsports since 2016. He has 17 career wins in the Cup Series, including seven on road courses.
KING OF THE ROAD: Larson won three road course events in 2021, the most ever during a NASCAR Cup Series season. Victories at Sonoma Raceway in June, Watkins Glen International in August and the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL in October were integral during his 10-win championship season.
In four road races this year (combined Sprint Cup and Nation Series races) Kyle Busch has three wins and one second place, giving him an average finish of 1.25. Yes, that's impressive.
NASCAR Driver Averages at Road AmericaDriverAvg Finish1Chase Elliott1.52Tyler Reddick4.53Ross Chastain5.54Kyle Larson9.526 more rows
Tim Richmond’s NASCAR career ended way too early. He raced just six full-time seasons in the Cup Series in the mid-1980s. When he drove, he was as good as anyone could be on road courses.
NASCAR's best road course drivers of all time are two Hall of Fame drivers who combined for seven NASCAR Cup Series champions. A current NASCAR star is quickly gaining on them, however.
Gordon won a total of nine times on these circuits; four race wins at Watkins Glen and five race wins at Sonoma. But the reason this feat is all the more impressive for Gordon is that prior to 2021, there were only a handful of opportunities for drivers to add to their road course wins., simply because those types of circuits featured scarcely on the calendar.
The scoop: Truex has won four road races including the last two at Sonoma (he has three wins there total). He's also got a win at Watkins Glen and been a runner-up there to Chase Elliott twice.
The scoop: The versatile sports-car ace made just 16 Cup Series starts -- seven on ovals, nine of road courses -- but five of those were sweeping victories at Riverside (Calif.) International Raceway. That quintet of wins came in dominant fashion from 1963-68, four of them with Wood Brothers Racing and one with the Holman-Moody operation.
The scoop: Smoke won just one road-course pole, but made it count on race day with five wins at Watkins Glen and three at Sonoma. His career average finish of 9.9 at Watkins Glen places the New York circuit as his second-best track. He capped off his farewell season in 2016 with a dramatic Sonoma victory, the last of his 49 Cup Series wins.
While impressive, El liott is still writing the story of his NASCAR Cup Series career, and his highlight-filled chapter on road courses is not fully complete. With the ascension of a current road-course king, let's look at NASCAR's all-time list (in no particular order) of rulers of the road.
More troublesome is the fact that Stewart has not been the same driver since suffering a badly broken leg in a non-NASCAR sprint car race at a dirt track in August 2013. He missed the last 15 races of that season because of the injuries, and in 48 starts since then he's managed just three top-five and eight top-10 finishes with zero wins.
Jeff Gordon has won nine times combined at Sonoma Raceway and Watkins Glen International, the two road courses currently on the Cup circuit. Tony Stewart has done so seven times.
Although the elder of the racing Busch brothers has claimed only one career road-course victory, he has finished fourth or better in three of the last four Sonoma races.
Although it wasn't that long ago, it was a different time in Martin Truex Jr.'s career when he scored his lone road-course win at Sonoma in 2013. He was still driving the No. 55 NAPA-sponsored Toyota when he won that day and was the toast of Napa Valley wine country.
Tony Stewart has done so seven times. No other active driver has more than three combined road-course wins. But that doesn't mean a bunch couldn't get it done this weekend at Sonoma, where there have been 10 different winners in the last 10 years.
Tony Stewart drove this No. 14 Old Spice car to Victory Lane at Watkins Glen in 2009. David Boe/Associated Press
But a closer look at his entire body of road work, plus the fact that Harvick and crew chief Rodney Childers have consistently put out one of the fastest cars in the field this year no matter where the series has raced, makes Harvick seem like a viable contender this weekend and perhaps again later in the summer at the Glen.
The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series only competes on road courses twice each season. It would be great to see a road course added to the Playoffs and the test on the road course at Charlotte could be the race that is added. Fingers crossed…
Kevin Harvick has only been to Victory Lane once at the road courses (Watkins Glen in 2006), but he consistently runs in the top 10. Harvick has finished four of the last five races in the top 10 at Sonoma and Watkins Glen.
Ron Fellows has won the most races by road ringers, winning in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and the NASCAR Xfinity Series mostly at Watkins Glen and once in Montreal. He almost won four Cup series races, finishing second at the Glen in 1999 and 2004, and dominating at Sonoma in 2001 (with NEMCO) and 2003 (with DEI .
NASCAR describes road course ringers as "drivers who specialize in turning both left and right," and says that "perhaps the greatest road-course ringer in NASCAR history might be Dan Gurney " after he won four straight NASCAR races at Riverside. He lapped the field at the 1964 event.
NASCAR term describing drivers who mostly drive on road courses. Boris Said is one of the most prominent road course ringers in NASCAR. A road course ringer, also known as road course specialist, road course expert, or a road runner, is a non-NASCAR driver who is hired by a NASCAR Cup Series or NASCAR Xfinity Series team to race, ...
Dan Gurney won five NASCAR races as a ringer, while also succeeding in Formula One. The last win by a road course ringer in a NASCAR Cup race was by Mark Donohue in 1973 in a Penske Racing AMC Matador in the Motor Trend 500 at Riverside.
Often, the disadvantage of having the NASCAR race car in itself, with its heavier car, narrower tire, smaller (compared to premium road-racing cars) brakes, (especially with inexperienced drivers) pit stops, and most often longer races (all NASCAR road course races are at least 200 miles /322 kilometers or longer) have hurt the "ringers".
Dirt track ringer. A variant of the road ringer, the dirt track ringer, has appeared in NASCAR since the Truck Series organized the Eldora Dirt Derby. Teams have often added a dirt track ace, typically a sprint car or dirt late model driver, for the Derby.
For example, road course driver Tony Ave would say, in a 2020 YouTube interview with a fan, that he stopped racing in NASCAR because he didn't want to become a start-and-park driver.
The driver with the most wins on a road course track in NASCAR history is the legendary Jeff Gordon.
As mentioned above, the best driver, statistically on a road course circuit, is Jeff Gordon, with nine wins.
Shaharyar is a Formula 1 & NASCAR writer at EssentiallySports. A graduate in Journalism from Amity University, he has been a passionate follower of motorsports for better part of the decade. A Max Verstappen and Ferrari supporter, he dreams of a pairing of the two in future.
The scoop: Truex has won four road races including the last two at Sonoma (he has three wins there total). He's also got a win at Watkins Glen and been a runner-up there to Chase Elliott twice.
The scoop: The versatile sports-car ace made just 16 Cup Series starts -- seven on ovals, nine of road courses -- but five of those were sweeping victories at Riverside (Calif.) International Raceway. That quintet of wins came in dominant fashion from 1963-68, four of them with Wood Brothers Racing and one with the Holman-Moody operation.
The scoop: Smoke won just one road-course pole, but made it count on race day with five wins at Watkins Glen and three at Sonoma. His career average finish of 9.9 at Watkins Glen places the New York circuit as his second-best track. He capped off his farewell season in 2016 with a dramatic Sonoma victory, the last of his 49 Cup Series wins.
While impressive, El liott is still writing the story of his NASCAR Cup Series career, and his highlight-filled chapter on road courses is not fully complete. With the ascension of a current road-course king, let's look at NASCAR's all-time list (in no particular order) of rulers of the road.